In the News

Highlights of UBC media coverage in November 2008

One-third of All Fish Pulled from Oceans Used in Animal Feed

A nine-year UBC study has found about one-third of all commercially harvested fish taken from the ocean is fed to farmed fish, poultry and pigs.

As reported by Reuters, Scientific American, the National Post, the Canberra Times, the New York Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, so-called forage fish such as anchovies, sardines and menhaden account for 37 per cent, or 31.5 million tons, of all fish taken from the world’s oceans each year.

UBC senior researcher Jacqueline Alder warns that the excessive harvesting of forage fish is “squandering a precious food resource for humans and disregarding the serious overfishing crisis in our oceans.”

Calling for a Crackdown on Human Trafficking

UBC legal expert Benjamin Perrin made international headlines after releasing statistics showing Romania, the Philippines, Moldova and China are the top-four source countries for foreign victims of human trafficking to Canada.

Perrin says despite 31 documented cases of international human trafficking in Canada over a two-year period, no one has been convicted of the crime in a Canadian court.

“We’ve confirmed that this problem is a reality in Canada - there are real Canadians who are exploiting these women as well as foreign traffickers exploiting these women,” Perrin told The Canadian Press.

Perrin also was called upon to comment on measures being taken by classifieds website Craigslist to crack down on human trafficking in the United States.

Tibetans Ponder Their Future

As Tibetans gathered in November to discuss their future, UBC historian and professor Tsering Shakya was called upon for expert analysis by the Los Angeles Times, TIME, International Herald Tribune, the New York Times and Abu Dhabi’s The National.

The shadow of China loomed over the talks, as did the Dalai Lama’s mortality. The 73-year-old leader was hospitalized last month and had a gallstone removed.

“China holds all the cards,” Shakya told the Los Angeles Times. Still, he said, “there’s an urgency among Tibetans to get an agreement before the Dalai Lama is no longer among them.”

UBC Financial Expert in High Demand

As the Canadian real estate market began to dip, Tsur Somerville, director of the Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate, found himself called upon to help explain the crisis to readers and viewers across Canada. Somerville was also interviewed by the Montreal Gazette and the Toronto Star.

Somerville commented on the uncertainty of Vancouver’s real estate market in a CBC Television report, saying the decline in home values and sales won’t end until economic conditions improve.

And as news leaked out that Vancouver city council secretly loaned $100-million to bail out the developers of the 2010 Olympic village, Somerville explained the impact the bailout will have on taxpayers to the CBC, Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Province.